indigenous issues for deheishe refugee camp youth

Archive for the ‘Shawnee’ Category

We will not be having class this week since a few of us will be out of the country or at camp. In the meantime, for those of you who are in Deheishe, here are a few things to read and watch to keep you busy until next week!

1. Here is the Suheir Hammad poem “In America” that I played for you in class a couple of weeks ago:

Right now you are standing on stolen land
No matter where you are hearing this poem,
I promise you, below you, is stolen land
Was Lakota, was Navaho, was Creek,
Was and was, and is and is,
And this fact does not change
Because you do not think about it
Or you thought the last Indian died before you were born
Or you were born one-fifteenth Apache,
This poem is not blaming you,
But allowing you an opportunity to do something
Start by saying something,
And from where you are standing,
Look North, South, look West, look East,
And see the theft, the occupation
Happening now,
And do something, start, start, by saying something

2. Here is some more background on the Shawnee tribe that we have been learning about in class:

The 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs granted the Shawnees still in northwest Ohio three reservations: Wapakoneta, Hog Creek, and Lewistown (see map below). By 1824, about 800 Shawnees lived in Ohio and 1,383 lived in Missouri. In 1825, Congress ratified a treaty with the Cape Girardeau Shawnees ceding their Missouri lands for a 1.6 million-acre reservation in eastern Kansas. After the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Ohio Shawnees on the Wapakoneta and Hog Creek reservations signed a treaty with the US giving them lands on the Kansas Reservation.

The Lewistown Reservation Shawnees, together with their Seneca allies and neighbors, signed a separate treaty with the federal government in 1831 and moved directly to Indian Territory (Oklahoma). The Lewistown Shawnees became the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, while their Seneca allies became the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma.

In 1854, the US government decimated the Kansas Reservation to 160,000 acres. This, coupled with the brutal abuses perpetrated against them by white settlers during and after the Civil War, forced the Kansas Shawnees to relocate to Cherokee Nation in northeastern Oklahoma. The 1854 Shawnee Reservation in Kansas was never formally extinguished and some Shawnee families retain their Kansas allotments today.

The federal government caused the former Kansas Shawnees and the Cherokees to enter into a formal agreement in 1869, whereby the Shawnees received allotments and citizenship in Cherokee Nation.

The Shawnees settled in and around White Oak, Bird Creek (Sperry), and Hudson Creek (Fairland), maintaining separate communities and separate cultural identities. Known as the Cherokee Shawnees, they would also later be called the Loyal Shawnees.

Initial efforts begun in the 1980s to separate the Shawnee Tribe from Cherokee Nation culminated when Congress enacted Public Law 106-568, the Shawnee Tribe Status Act of 2000, which restored the Shawnee Tribe to its position as a sovereign Indian nation.

3. Here is a video that may be difficult, but will show you some more similarities between American Indians and Palestinians:

Exploring the reality and the history of Indigenous Peoples on Turtle Island to that of Palestinians, speakers offered numerous critical insights surrounding the Indigenous Experience, the policies of state governments, and the realities of living under colonial occupation.